


Witnesses

by DisaLanglois



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:43:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisaLanglois/pseuds/DisaLanglois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2010 Bujold Ficathon.  Prompt: those called to witness the day the Imperial Heir is born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witnesses

By the time Miles and Ekaterin arrived at the Residence, there were enough people walking in the streets that Pym was forced to drive slowly and brake sharply several times to avoid pedestrians. Ekaterin was sitting next to Miles on the seat, her eyes scanning the people through the darkened canopy of the car. In the half-light she looked tense. He patted her hand and received a smile.

The night-time walkers seemed to thicken as they neared the centre of the city, with scattered clumps of people standing around on the Plaza. The Plaza’s lights had all been turned on, as if it was Winterfair, digging out deep shadows on the tar and casting every lurking figure into harsh relief. The Municipal Guard had to clear passage before the Residence’s gates could be opened, and Pym pulled the car through. The air was thick with the sounds of voices and the wild skirl of Barrayaran music.

As soon as the car slid to a halt at the main entrance a Vorbarra Armsman drew their door open. Miles climbed out, and handed Ekaterin out after himself. The Armsman saluted, and said, “My lord. My lady. This way, if you please.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the hubbub from the Plaza, even here.

Ekaterin slipped her arm into Miles’ without a word, and they followed the Armsman up the steps and into the Residence. “I’m glad I decided to wait for you,” she murmured down at him, as they trod the deep pile carpet stairs. “I’ve never seen crowds like that before.”

“You’re perfectly safe with Pym and Roic,” he reassured her, patting her fingers. “And it’s not a mob out there, just a lot of nosy people waiting to see what will happen.”

“I know, intellectually. But I can’t help been unnerved. I’m so glad you’re here.”

The Armsman came to a pair of elaborately carved mahogany doors and opened them. He announced them to the room of other Witnesses. “My lord Auditor Vorkosigan. My lady Vorkosigan.” Two dozen or so faces turned to them in the dimly-lit space.

The room they had been shown into was the receiving room of one of the suites, with wide windows that looked out over the Plaza. It was lushly carpeted and curtained, but now emptied of most of its furniture. The curtains were all drawn, and the lights were dimmed, obscuring the view of the curious outside. One of the adjoining rooms held a team of medical personnel and the uterine replicator. In there, kicking and squirming with increasing insistence, was the yet-unborn Crown Prince, and Miles’ future liege lord.

Most of the crowd went back to their own conversations, but Gregor was close to the door, and he turned to them. “Miles! Ekaterin! Thank heavens, I thought you’d miss it.”

“Not in life, Sire. Good evening, My Lady,” Miles greeted Laisa, who came up to Gregor’s side. Ekaterin went to her, and the two women exchanged an embrace.

The Empress looked as frazzled as her husband. “We’re just waiting for my parents to come through from the shuttleport.”

Gregor nodded. “Not much longer, or he’ll hurt himself. Or so the med tech says.”

“He’s in a hurry to be born,” drawled a familiar voice over Miles’ shoulder.

Miles turned, directly into his usual view of the centre of Ivan Vorpatril’s chest. His nose was roughly on a level with Ivan’s name badge. He stepped back so as to gaze into his cousin’s face. Mark stood behind Ivan’s shoulder. “Hello Ivan. I see they’ve decided to let you in after all. Hello Mark.”

“Did the crowds give you any trouble on your way in?” Mark asked.

“No. They’re mostly just standing around watching the show.”

“There are more and more of them out there every minute.”

“The Guard is on top of them.”

Gregor had swung away to talk to Henri Vorvolk, abandoning his guests with less than his usual tact, although Miles figured he could be forgiven for being tactless this night. Laisa stayed with them.

“How do they all know?” she asked. “We only knew ourselves at lunchtime. How did the word get out so fast?”

“This is Barrayar, my lady,” Ekaterin said. “The walls have ears.”

“We don’t have news media here,” Miles soothed. “We have gossip taken to the level of a galactic sport. Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine.”

“That’s what General Allegre says, but I can’t help but worry.”

General Allegre was not here, but Simon Illyan was, and Lady Alys. Ekaterin slipped her arm from Miles’ and went off to talk to them. Miles spotted his parents across the room, chatting to Kou and Drou. He returned his mother’s wave.

“I heard all the pubs and bars in the city have set up shop in the street,” Ivan remarked. “They’re all staying open all night. And all the embassies have panicked and pulled down the shutters.”

“There are dozens of media teams out there right now,” Miles said. “They’re videoing anyone who so much as looks in their direction.”

Ivan nodded. “Yup. There’s a screen in the next room, if you want to see. Allegre is in there. He looks ready to commit hara kiri out of sheer paranoia.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Miles said.

His mother had come across the room to them. “Hello, kiddo,” she said. Her eyes were gleaming with enjoyment. “This is just like old times.”

“Have you seen this sort of thing before?” Laisa asked.

“Oh, yes. Barrayarans seem to need to let their hair down now and again. Every decade or so they all go mad, running around, setting a few cars on fire, maybe throwing some stones, just to let off steam. They’ll stop when the collective hangover starts to kick in.” She spoke about her adopted planet with the amused tone of a pet owner discussing an incorrigible breed of carpet-chewer. “And then they’ll all get collective amnesia about it and pretend it never happened. Don’t worry about it too much.”

By ten o’clock the crowds outside had grown thick enough that there was standing room only on the Plaza. They stood gazing through the wrought iron fence in their thousands, staring at the floodlit Residence. More were arriving every minute.

On the news video, Miles could see the throngs moving along the streets. It seemed every watering hole and private residence was open to the streets, with people going between houses and walking in chattering groups down the night streets. It seemed like a random movement, but there was a current there, and it drew the stream towards the Residence. The Municipal Guard had all been called up, with the Army on standby just in case. The crowd had even been seeded with plain-clothes ImpSec agents as a steadying influence.

Gregor had finally released an official announcement an hour ago, declaring the birth of the heir imminent and appealing for a peaceful night.

And by and large, this was a peaceful night. Three groundcars had been set alight along Long Elm Boulevard, and surrounded by impromptu street parties, but it had all been done without much rancour, almost absently, as if it was a tradition no-one could quite remember the purpose of. The noise that reached them in the curtained room was a rumble, not a shriek. Every so often the rumble solidified itself into songs. Through so many drunken throats the words were indistinguishable, but the rhythms were all familiar. Those were songs of pride and solidarity, and Miles felt a lump in his own throat in memory of singing those songs in the Academy.

 _“… We’re back to you, reporting live on the situation here in Vorbarr Sultana. Since the announcement there has been no formal word from the Residence, but speculation runs high. We’re going to go now to our man on the scene. Geoff, what’s happening at the moment?”_

 _“Well, Svetlana, as you can see the crowds are getting thicker here. There’s not much movement going on in the Residence that we can see, but the vibe here tonight is just incredible…”_

Miles and his mother watched the news video from the next room, sitting companionably close on a sofa. The views on the screen came from a flock of aerial cameras, hovering and darting around just beyond the force shields. Most of them were turned on the Residence, but some panned over the crowds.

“There has to be at lease ten thousand people out there,” Miles said. He could see the Municipal Cavalry, on their mountainous black horses, standing up like rocks jutting out of the tide. The people were pressing close against the horses’ bodies, and the animals weren’t liking it.

“The pressure is rising at the front of that crowd. I hope there aren’t any people down there getting crushed,” the Countess answered.

When it had become clear that the word was out, Gregor had ordered crowd-control barriers mounted parallel to the Residence front fence, but even with these in place the people at the front were being pressed against the wrought iron rails.

“One thrown stone, and this will all go to hell,” Miles worried. “Look at the guards. None of them has ever seen anything like this before.” He glanced at his mother. “Did you mean it when you said you’d seen this before, or were you just reassuring Laisa?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve seen this before. The last time, a whole government building ended up being dismantled, brick by brick.” Miles gulped. “That was an angry mob, though. This one is just … waiting for something to happen.”

“Here they are,” someone said, and Miles turned to the doorway behind them in time to catch a glimpse of Laisa’s parents hurrying by.

“All right, time to get the show on the road,” the Countess said, standing up and smoothing down her skirts. “The next time you see me, you’ll have yourself a brand new Crown Prince.” She went out.

Gregor and Laisa wasted no more time. Miles’ parents and Laisa’s followed the Imperial couple into the room where the replicator waited, and then the door was firmly shut. This was a moment for the parents and foster-parents only.

It was a little anticlimactic, Miles realized. _All this tense waiting, and now we wait some more._ Ivan, Mark and Henri were conferring in a corner. All around the room, the others had all split off into twos and threes. He started walking over toward his brother, and then changed his mind and went over to the high windows instead.

The curtains had been drawn, but they weren’t thick curtains, and it was blazingly light outside by comparison with the sombre dimness in here. Miles stood back slightly and gazed out across the Plaza.

These rooms opened out onto a wide balcony that stretched across the façade of the building. Once upon a time, the balcony had gazed directly down into the Plaza, but in Ezar’s time the forecourt of the Residence had been extended and barricaded. Miles could see a dense dark blanket of humanity, filling the entire Plaza and curtailed by the railing. Thousands of faces, all staring back at him.

“This reminds me of the night Gregor himself was born,” a voice said over his shoulder. Miles looked up at Simon Illyan. The former security chief was gazing sombrely through the curtain. Without prompting, he added, “Eight people were crushed to death that night.”

“We have crowd control measures in place,” Miles said, as much to reassure himself as for conversation.

“That’s not going to be enough if this goes on, even with the Municipal Guard blocking off the roads now. That fence looks ready to give way.”

They both knew that the decorative wrought-iron fence, with its fleur-de-lis spikes, wasn’t the real defence of the Residence. The actual invisible perimeter stood just inside the fence, a powerful force shield capable of giving a nasty injury to anyone coming into unauthorized contact with it. Miles hoped it wouldn’t be needed tonight.

They watched for a while longer.

“What name have you put your money on?” Illyan asked after a bit, without looking away from the curtain.

“My money?”

“There’s a pool going. The most popular choice is Ezar, with Serg and Aral tied. You didn’t hear it from me, by the way, and Ivan didn’t start it.”

Miles smiled. “Hm, if I was inclined to bet… I think I’d go with Serg. I have a feeling Gregor would like to recycle the name innocuously, as if nothing happened. We’re all innocents here.”

“Well, if you change your mind, you don’t have much time le-”

He was interrupted by a sound that cut through the din outside, cleanly, shrilly. It was the wail of a baby.

A ripple seemed to go through the two dozen people waiting, as if some sort of wind had come up and blown smiles onto everyone’s faces. “A Crown Prince, at last!” someone exclaimed. Someone else opened the door and yelled the news out into the corridor, and a third was babbling into a wrist-com. Miles found himself meeting Ekaterin’s eyes across the room. She and Kareen were in each other’s arms, laughing, and the happiness on her face brought a grin from him, and a prickle in his eyes.

“Watch!” Illyan said, drawing Miles’ attention back to the curtain with a tap to his shoulder.

On the forecourt outside, a Vorbarra Armsman was drawing on the halliards of the bare flagpole alongside the one flying Gregor’s standard. The ball of fabric rose to the top, and with a practised jerk of his wrists the Armsman broke the bundling apart. The flag lifted itself to the air.

For the first time in decades, the standard of a Crown Prince flew alongside the standard that declared the Emperor was in Residence.

Realization went through the crowd like an electric shock. The roar that issued from them rose like a wave. It battered at the old walls of the Residence, a solid force of sonic energy.

“My God!” Miles said, as he saw the fence give way. The crowd had surged forward spasmodically. Each individual needed only to take a single step, but thousands of those steps became an unstoppable force, a pulse of physical power. The fence buckled and went down.

“Hold your fire!” Miles could hear Allegre’s voice screaming. “Stand down! Hold your fire! Let them forward! I repeat, hold your fire!”

Miles could see people falling down there, tripping over the concrete parapet of the fence and being immediately pushed onto their faces and buried under the people behind. The horsemen were being carried along too, helpless flotsam on the tide. He realized he was crushing handfuls of the curtain in his fists. Simon Illyan was barking into his own wrist-com. “Sasha Ivanovich, is that you? Turn off the force shield, right now! That’s right. Turn it off. Lock the doors manually. Yes. Just do it!” He broke his connection and his eyes met Miles’. “I don’t want to see history repeating itself in front of my bloody eyes!”

The door to the room with the baby opened, and Count Vorkosigan looked out. “What’s going on?” He was informed by about four voices, and ducked back into the room.

The mob had flooded right up against the building, so that they ebbed just below the balcony. The sound was incredible. Several of the Witnesses had rushed out of the room already, going to do what they could. Others crowded to the windows, peering down at the impeding catastrophe. Miles clutched at the curtain like a drowning man.

Gregor himself came to the door. His eyes swept the room in a single glance. He tossed his head. “I never thought I’d see this! Vor lords hiding in the dark from a mob? Who do you all think I am, Louis the Sixteenth?”

He strode to the double doors that led to the balcony, and swept his palm over the lock to open them.

Illyan lunged, as if to grab his liege lord by the coat-tails and yank him back physically, but it was too late. Gregor had flung both doors open wide and stepped out onto the balcony, into the glare of the lights and the full view of ten thousand people.

Miles made a croaking sound. For a moment he couldn’t move, just stood and stared at the open doors. Then he jerked back to the realization that he was standing at a window. He turned to watch through the curtain.

Gregor stood at the parapet. His one arm was raised, and he was making gently calming gestures with his hand, as if stroking the mob to silence. His other hand was up by his face, and Miles knew without seeing that he had a finger across his lips.

And, miraculously, they were heeding him. The roar was dropping, sliding down in shrillness and volume as if being tuned. The violent motion beyond the balcony began to slow down, and a great pool of silence began to spread, beginning at the foot of the balcony and keeping spreading until it reached the very edges of the Plaza.

Gregor stood alone, above ten thousand motionless people.

The aerial cameras had come in through the force shields along with the mob, and now they hovered about him, playing their lights around his form. He turned to them. “I know you can transmit my voice.” He spoke to the crews through their cameras. “Kindly transmit me now.”

He paused, and drew in a deep breath. “I will have you be still!” His voice boomed alone through the Plaza. Miles could see by the stiffness of his neck that he was surprised by his own volume, but surely no-one else noticed. His voice echoed back from the buildings and across news screens all across the planet. “You are going to wake up the baby!”

The sound swelled up slowly this time, building to a great crest of sound. Not the howl of a mob, this time, but something infinitely more human. Ten thousand people laughed.

Gregor’s hands went up again, like a conductor. Those gentle shushing motions again, and the crowd obediently stilled itself like an orchestra responding to its maestro. The noise sank to nothing.

 

“Now,” Gregor said crisply. “I will have order here, first. On my command, every single person here will take one step backward, and all the people beyond the lights will take two. These poor people here are being squashed. Right… Move!”

There was a moment’s stillness, and then the rustle of movement multiplied by thousands. Miles couldn’t see much of beyond the line of the balcony, but he was aware of the distant surface of the crowd rippling, as, collectively, the entire Plaza stepped back.

He realized he was holding his breath, and let it out. There was not a single sound from the room behind him. There were odd sounds from below the balcony, as the people being stood upon suddenly found themselves able to breath, and struggled to their feet. Gregor still stood, silhouetted by the lights of the Plaza. The Residence’s shields were all down, and his guards below were busy helping the fallen people off the ground. He stood as exposed as he ever had in his life.

 _“Now hear this!”_ Gregor said. “There will be _no_ shouting. There will be _no_ running. There will be a short wait, _quietly,_ and We will be back.”

With that he dropped his hands to his sides and stepped backwards in the room; the maestro retiring from his stage. He put his hands out, and drew the two blades of the doors shut between himself and his subjects, leaving a gap of about a hand span by way of promise.

For a moment the vertical bar of light from that gap ran down his face, and Miles saw his cousin’s strained expression.

Then the Emperor turned, and their eyes met. Miles puffed out his lips in a sigh.

Gregor did not smile. “It looks like I can’t even have this moment to keep to myself,” he said to Miles, very quietly. He turned on his heel.

“Sire!” Allegre started. “That was very brave, but you cannot…”

“Don’t tell Us what We can and cannot do, General,” Gregor said. He didn’t raise his voice. In fact his voice wasn’t even particularly assertive. He simply sounded tired. He stepped around the floundering Allegre and strode back to the room where his wife and newborn son waited.

Miles found himself again. “That was… quite something. I don’t think that could have happened anywhere else but Barrayar,” he said. _Gregor is not our master in name alone, oh no._ He was more than merely their head of state, he was head of the culture, of history, of the social order, the ultimate symbol of Barrayaran-ness for Barrayarans. He was the shared leader of all the ten thousand out there.

“Ezar could not have done that,” Illyan replied, shaking his head wonderingly. “Nor Yuri. Dorca could have. And Xav, I think.”

Gregor and Laisa appeared again in the doorway. Laisa held a bundle in her arms, wrapped up in a blanket the colours of the Vorbarra house uniform.

“Ahh,” Miles said, and went closer for a look.

Gregor and Laisa circulated so that everyone could see, and no-one sought to emulate the mob outside by pressing too close. Still, it was some time before Miles found himself looking at the face of his Crown Prince for the first time.

“He looks like his mother,” he said. The tiny wrinkled face did have something of the curve of her lips and the arch of her nose, but his wispy dark hair and colouring was all Vorbarra. This sleeping bundle was his future Emperor. Some day his own unborn sons would kneel in obedience to this baby. The circle was complete.

“He does, doesn’t he?” Gregor agreed, clearly delighted. He was grinning at Laisa, eyes alight with pride and pleasure, and she beamed back at him. “Now it’s your turn, eh, Miles?”

“That’s up to Ekaterin,” Miles temporised.

“Good plan,” Laisa dimpled at him. Gregor put his arm around her, and drew his wife and son to his side in affectionate possessiveness. His gaze went over Miles’ head, and his face went more grave. “I want to thank both of you, for bringing Our house safely to this moment.”

Miles turned, to see who he was speaking to. His father was there, with his arm around Illyan’s shoulder. The Count was beaming. Illyan was trying to look invisible, and failing. “My boy,” Aral Vorkosigan rumbled. “It’s been a long and hard duty, but it has all been worth it.”

“Thank you.” Gregor looked around. “All right, has everyone seen their fill? Good, now it’s time I keep my promise to the rest of the Witnesses.”

“Sire!” cried Allegre, with a voice of desperation, but Illyan cut him off.

“Oh, shut up, Guy. If anyone out there has ill intentions, that mob out there will tear him to shreds in a heartbeat. Blowing your nose too hard in this direction would be suicidal right now.”

Miles heard his mother mutter, _“Barrayarans!”_

Laisa took a firmer hold around the baby, and made to follow Gregor out of the doors to the balcony, but he gestured to her to wait. With a sharp tug he drew both doors wide to either side of himself, and strode out into the glare again.

The noise out there had dropped to a surreal hush while the Witnesses inside had been shown the baby. The only sound indicating the presence of thousands of people had been an deep, almost subsonic, purr. Now the sound banked up again, as ten thousand people drew in their breaths with a collective hiss of “there he is!”

“Hear my voice!” Gregor spoke for the whole Plaza once more. “Every single person here is to keep their feet planted on the ground exactly where they are! You move not one single toe in this direction!” He didn’t wait for any reply. Instead he turned and beckoned Laisa out onto the balcony. Miles saw her pass from the shadowy room into the glare, stepping confidently up to her husband’s side. The new Crown Prince, still asleep, entered the limelight for the first time in his life.

The sound out there now was different yet again. An expectant hiss. A susurration. An inhalation, into thousands of throats simultaneously.

Miles could almost feel the emotion welling up from the crowd. No, he could feel it. His eyes were wet, and he swept them clear. Ekaterin was suddenly by him, and he put both his hands into hers.

Gregor was speaking now, directly at the cameras. “The people at the back can’t see. You, come closer. Ah, ah, ah! _Only_ the blue and pink one. Not too close. That’s it.”

There was a long moment.

“Barrayar. May I present to you, Crown Prince Xavier Alexander Gregorovich Vorbarra, my eldest son and heir to all my titles and the house and Imperium of Vorbarra.”

They were the formal words of introduction of an heir to the Council of Counts, but the mob outside didn’t care. Miles saw Laisa, smiling, say something to her husband, but her words were lost in the thunder.

Prince Xavier woke up and began to add his little bit to the noise, his face screwed up in intense outrage at this new disruption. Laisa clasped him to her urgently, and spoke to Gregor again, then came back inside. She was immediately surrounded by her parents and friends.

Gregor, alone again out there, began gesturing for calm again. It took a few moments.

“You have all seen him. Now I’m afraid it’s time for you all to go. You may go party, go celebrate, or go sleep, but you will depart. In an orderly manner, if you please. My son needs to sleep.”

He turned on his heel and came back inside. This time he closed the doors behind him, gently, but properly.

It was done.


End file.
